What is real, how do you define real? if you are talking about what you can feel, what you can taste, touch or see, then real is simply electrical sig

  • Thread starter Thread starter IWantGod
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
HerCrazierHalf said:
We can of course take this even further than the brain in a box. How do we know we are real? It’s entirely possible that we are simulations too. And that condition would be next to impossible to detect.
Click to expand...
If we are simulations, wouldn’t we be “real simulations”?
 
Kei said:
Precisely, there is a half colored half colored ball.
Both our subjective experiences with the ball lead to conflicting conclusions, but they are subjective experiences of an objective reality (a half color half color ball). Your example admits of what I am speaking.
Click to expand...
I don’t think so: what I say is that any given object can really have multiple interaction modes with other objects or subjects.
 
JuanFlorencio said:
If we really abstract the essence of a dog, why should our “subjective experience” be different from “objective reality”?
Click to expand...
The essence or substance of the dog is not in the intellect or in the sensible phantasm but its likeness.
 
I trust my sense are fairly reliable. I believe we are made in the Image of God and thus have the capability to understand what goes on in reality at least a little bit.
 
Richca said:
40.png
JuanFlorencio:
If we really abstract the essence of a dog, why should our “subjective experience” be different from “objective reality”?
Click to expand...
The essence or substance of the dog is not in the intellect or in the sensible phantasm but its likeness.
Click to expand...
Of course! If this is what @Key says, I have nothing to say against it. But it seems to me that @Key says that there is no such likeness between our thought and reality (though certainly, sometimes there is no such likeness)
 
This is the flip side of the old “If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound?” question.

How do you know there are electrical signals in your brain? How do you know you have a brain? How do you know you have a body at all?

René Descartes showed this thinking could be taken to the kind of extremes implied by the science fiction clip…that is, that the only awareness one could be certain was true was self-awareness: cogito ergo sum. If you take this beyond the minimal self-awareness that proves existence, however, what are you left with? Certainly no one with any self-knowledge believes that their knowledge of themselves is always correct. If you cannot believe your own perceptions about yourself, you cannot believe what your senses tell you and you cannot believe what comes to you on the testimony of others or conjectures based on what is known about others who seem like you, what do you have? You have pretty close to nothing.

If anything, this whole intellectual exercise shows the necessity of both faith and humility. We never have indisputable proof of anything whatsoever if by “indisputable” we mean “those things about which the Evil One could entice a ‘learned’ person to doubt.” We have to let down our guard and accept things which could be falsified by some stretch of the imagination. We have no other choice, because our ability to know is limited.
 
tweedlealice said:
Well, I’m not feeling deep tonight. I have the thought from philosophy: DOES A TREE MAJE A NOISE WHEN IT FALLS IN THE FORREST AND NO ONE IS NEAR TO HEAR IT?

I say, YES! B/c noise is vibration and animals are around.
Click to expand...
That’s a reasonable answer. It is not quite the whole point that can be taken from the question. For instance, consider the idea of beauty. Consider a painting that is beautiful because of a particular interplay of colors. Perhaps such a painting could be generated by adhering to certain objective aesthetic standards that could be measured without a human ever looking at the piece. Now suppose that painting is seen by someone who is colorblind. Will it be beautiful to them? The painting is not in the dark: that is, the exact same reflected electromagnetic radiation is reaching the colorblind person as what reaches the color-sighted person. You can see that the objective standards that define beauty still require a typical human perception apparatus to have the intended effect. Beauty could be both something that could be objectively defined and yet also something that rests on human perception.

OK, so suppose that a tree falls and by falling generates a disturbance in the air that physically propogates as a wave. Is that a sound before it is heard, or is that simply an air disturbance? Does the word “sound” require the sense of hearing? What about “melody”? Does that word imply a pattern in sound only? In some sense, the whole tree/sound question isn’t just about perception. It is about agreeing on what words actually mean and differentiating between a physical phenomenon (a disturbance in the air propogating as a wave) and a sense perception. When two philosophers are discussing a “sound,” they have to agree on whether they are discussing the physical air disturbance only or also discussing the entirety of how the disturbance is perceived by a human with typical hearing.
tweedlealice said:
Now, Pain scientists are saying, if your brain doesn’t get the signal, you won’t feel pain…

Just my humble thoughts

In Christ’s love

Tweedlealice
Click to expand...
This is true. There are parts of the body where you can do the same damage to a portion without pain receptors that is literally three inches from a portion that has those receptors, and you will not feel the damage in the area with no pain receptors. Like air disturbance and sound, there is a difference between physical damage that reaches pain receptors and the sensation of pain. It is even possible to propogate an experience of pain without even touching the body part that seems to be in pain.
 
Last edited:
IWantGod said:
What is real, how do you define real? if you are talking about what you can feel, what you can taste, touch or see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.
Click to expand...
That’s an observation about perception not reality
 
Brittany said:
What is real is what is objectively true.

Immanuel Kant proposed the idea that we “kant” know objective reality, only that we can know what we perceive. We see things how we sense them, but how we sense them is filled with personal biases and subjectivity. Therefore, we “kant” know what is actually true, we can only see things in our own subjective way.

But if Kant’s proposition is true, then we really can’t even know that. Lots of these types of ideologies seem to forget that they, themselves, are included. If objectively reality really can’t be known, then nobody can really know that. Logical inconsistencies are rampant in these types of arguments.
Click to expand...
Not exactly. Kant distinguished between empirical subjectivity and transcendental subjectivity. What you are describing is a little bit similar to what he called empirical subjectivity. And he advised his readers: Don’t confuse one thing with the other!

Objective reality would be for him, for example, that which Newton, Leibniz and Descartes studied concerning the movement of bodies (momentum, energy…), and it was only Newton who had gotten it right. Kant’s doctrine was intended precisely to explain how Newtonian physics (which for Kant was objectively true) is possible.

I am not kantian, and disagree with kantian doctrine, but it is not what you have described here.
 
Reality is revealed by truth one is Divinely revealed to know the other. hmmm
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top